Our Priorities.
Funding for Public Schools
I come to my unerring support for public schools honestly. My dad was an educator for nearly 40 years and I have been a teacher in several communities in public schools and have spent time in a charter school and teaching abroad in Sweden. I have found one truism in 20 years of teaching- public schools work to serve every child.
My colleagues and I teach our students who absorb knowledge like sponges, and our students who need a lot more time and patience to learn. We do not choose who walks through the door, the homes from which they come, or the trauma they endure. We take them all, teach them all and love them all.
For this reason alone, we have to guarantee fully funded public schools staffed with highly skilled and empathetic teachers, paraprofessionals, bus drivers, lunch providers and administrators to help students reach for their fullest potential. This also means helping schools in our small Minnesota towns with operation, school facility upkeep, and improvement grants so students can learn in top notch facilities whether they live in Blaine or Backus, Minnetonka or Menahga.
Affordable Health Care Access
My good friend told me about her mother who is living in one of our area long term care homes. She told me about the expense to live there and also told me about the lack of proper automatic doors, regular check-ins from staff and the seeming lack of any oversight.
My friend mentioned that a long term care home in one town is half empty while another in a neighboring town has a long wait list.
Another friend of mine shared the story of his mother who lived in a senior living apartment, but fell and broke a bone. My friend searched and struggled and the closest facility was 45 miles away in Frazee. He spent weeks traveling back and forth daily to make sure his mother had what she needed.
Recently, the last delivery room in District 5A closed. Expecting parents now need to go to Brainerd, Bemidji, or Detroit Lakes to deliver babies in a delivery room. For a lot of people, these are1 hour or longer drives. Cars are not delivery rooms.
We can do better. We have to make it possible for our parents, friends, and neighbors to get the care they need close to home. Our rural health systems need our support. I support training, development and grants for healthcare workers and fair wages and healthcare for people who do the work.
I support increasing supports to rural clinics, hospitals and long term care facilities so they have the resources to stay open and offer dignified care that my folks and yours can afford.
Early Childhood Education & Affordable Childcare
As a teacher of students from 3 to 18 years over 20 years, I can tell you the value of consistent, quality learning at every age. Children deserve and thrive with attention from adults. Significant paid parental leave allows parents to build the firmest of bonds and form the strongest of foundations for young children and the MN DFL leadership has started the process.
When parents need to return to work, we can provide great options. Parents in rural Minnesota know the struggles of finding any childcare at all let alone affordable, quality childcare. Daycare providers know the difficulties also. We can find solutions including early childhood education, community childcare, and home based childcare.
Ecological Stewardship
My grandfather and dad came together for something like 50 years of waterfowl hunting seasons and my dad and I have carried on that tradition for over 30 years. While my dad is not able to traverse the wetlands any more, I watch the ducks, geese, swans, loons, blackbirds, eagles, and crows fly or swim on the lake or river. I think future generations should have these experiences.
We have an amazing diversity of natural beauty and we are responsible for maintaining and protecting our natural world. I live in Park Rapids, within 20 miles of hundreds of lakes, rivers, and streams that not only supply this area with terrific views, but fishing, tourism, and a fresh water source that is the envy of the world. Protecting that is not a matter of choice, but an imperative.
None of us can deny the climate changes taking place when this last Christmas, for the first time in 150 years of record keeping, here in Park Rapids, we had no snow. We have to pay attention to this important thing, we don’t have time to waste!
Housing, Jobs & Development
We need more housing! Encouraging communities to adapt zoning and building regulations to allow for accessory dwelling units, multi-family housing, and adapt building codes to maintain health and safety standards while allowing for do-it-yourself options can decrease building cost and develop potential income streams for people in small towns. We can make sure that small communities have the infrastructure improvements they need to support quality, affordable housing.
We are responsible for maintaining and protecting our natural world. This does not mean we can never build, develop, and improve the quality and number of jobs in rural Minnesota. We can build smarter, more efficient homes and businesses. Companies that pollute, degrade, and damage our shared resources have to be held responsible so we, the people, aren't left to clean up the mess.
Democracy
Voting is powerful and those that seek to limit people from voting do so for only one reason; fear. Fear that their ideas or policies cannot convince a majority of people to vote for them, and fear that the power to which they cling will be diminished. But the truth is that the power never belonged to "them". Power has always belonged to we, the people.
Of course, at many times in our American history there have been those who have attempted to withhold the right to vote from individuals, groups, or entire classes of Americans- but we, the people, always overcome.
